This week we celebrated Pentecost Sunday. We did not linger over the traditional passages that are often read and reflected upon on Pentecost Sunday. Instead we talked about the importance of acknowledging our need for the Holy Spirit to open every part of us to God's redeeming work, and to give us the discernment to know how to sort through just how God means for us to live in this world. We returned to 1 Peter 3:13-22 and noted that Peter takes it for granted that Christians will be harmed for doing what is right and good. So certain is he of this that he appropriates the theme of the suffering righteous from Psalm 34 in order to frame his exhortations and encouragements. In the Old Testament, vindication was promised for the suffering righteous - Messiah would come and make things right. For those of us living on the other side of Jesus' life, death and resurrection we are experiencing that vindication but in a surprising way. The sign of our vindication is not the absence of suffering or the temporal defeat of our enemies - the sign of our vindication is simply this: our identification with the crucified Messiah who God has vindicated by raising him from the dead. To see vindication in this way requires a conversion of the imagination - here I think it is good to remember afresh the quotes from Joel Green from last week:
"The issue is this: life-events do not come with self-contained and immediately obvious interpretations; rather we conceptualize them in terms of imaginative structures that we take to be true, normal, and good. As a rule the world at large casts a thick dark cloud of despair over experiences of suffering, distress, trials and alien status. Peter insists that such experiences on the part of his audience must be read according to a radically different pattern of thought - one that grows out of new birth. (Green)"
Specifically, with regard to this portion of 1 Peter, we understand Peter to be teaching us to read the proverbial language of the OT with a conversion of the imagination, through the lens of suffering with Jesus as we live out his mission in a world that still opposes his righteousness. God does vindicate the righteous and his eyes are on them but, as we mentioned before, suffering for one's association with Christ becomes the sign of vindication; the proverbial language of God's protection of the good is given a gospel saturated meaning, "because the axioms articulated here find their center in a recalibration of the universe - a recalibration for which there is evidence in the OT of the long tradition of the suffering of the righteous, and which has now received the divine imprimatur in the life. death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Green)."
Last week we talked about what kind of take-away we are to get from this passage in our particular place and times. I have suggested that for us it is less about figuring out how we suffer and more about being sure that we are united to Christ in the kind of deep discipleship which will sometimes mean that we will suffer for our life-choices. To put it another way, our brothers and sisters to whom Peter is talking knew pretty quickly what it meant to swim against the currents within their culture which opposed God's righteousness in Christ. Conversion to Jesus as savior and lord was rejection of Caesar as savior and Lord, and rejection of the way Roman society and religion worked. This ensured the Christan would experience scornful rejection and sometimes worse. For us, given our unique experience of being Christians in a pluralistic world that once saw itself as Christendom, we have to be prayerful and seek God's discernment in order to ascertain what parts of our culture we must be careful to swim against. And then we must ask for more discernment in order to figure out how to do it in a cruciform pattern.
When I think about a need for discernment with regard to ascertaining what parts of our culture we must be careful to swim against I think immediately about our sex saturated culture and how it invites us to think of ourselves first and foremost in terms of our sexuality, sexual desires, sexual orientations, etc. To deny the beauty of sex or pretend that it is not an important part of being human is not good and sometimes Christians talk in prudish ways that make it seem that sex is somehow inherently dirty. However, in our socio-cultural world, sex is often the de facto religious experience most prominently on offer, or as the late Walker Percy is credited as saying: .... in our days, sexual intimacy is seen as the last hiding-place of real transcendence.
The question for us: Is the gospel good news for people with regard to the sexual parts of their selves? Well, Christians say yes but then we kind of trail off into a bunch of rules about sex. Of course, rules with regard to sex are helpful. The picture of marital fidelity God has given us in the Scriptures offers us boundaries that are meant to protect us from what Rowan Williams calls the shadow side of sex. There is however, in my estimation, a different place to start the conversation with our culture though - not with rules but by asking the question: where does my self draw its core identity from? The Christian answer to this question is that our identity is bound up with the identity of Jesus so that we are meant to see the whole of our lives as opportunities for Christ's life to be formed in us. This means that for each of us, regardless of our sexual history, our orientation to sex, whether we see our selves as heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise - each of us who are following Jesus in faith and repentance are called to see our identity not in terms of our sexuality but in terms of our life in Christ and our call to represent him to each other and the world. My hunch is that each of us falls short of doing this; and, as part of our formation, we need to return over and over again to this foundational plank of what it means to follow Jesus as his disciple - and often in repentance.
But how is this good news, or gospel? In the big picture of things the gospel is good news because when the message of the gospel is believed the believer is emancipated from the chains that bind us in the parts of our lives where we have chosen behavior patterns that, though offering passing pleasures, in the end close us to God's desire for us to flourish. So, for each of us, we are to ask God's spirit to open up every part of us - including our sexual thoughts, desires and actions - to open us to his forgiveness, restoration, discernment and guidance. There is also good news in coming to understand that our struggles with regard to sex and sexuality reflect the brokenness of this world just as every other thing we struggle with does. But we are to be diligent disciples, even as God is a patient parent and Jesus a sympathetic high priest, who was tempted in every way we were. And diligence means that we are not to shut this side of ourselves off from our active petition for God's work in us and for us. Diligence also means that we are to reject the idolatry on offer in our culture which would have us believe that virtually ever sexual desire is either morally neutral or good.
Finally, how is this aspect of the Christian invitation - to find one's life and identity in Christ and not in sex - good news for those outside of the church, especially those who are not yet disciples of Jesus? Well, it is usually not good news and we must be honest with that. We give the impression, at least lot of times we do, that the price of admission to the church is a sexual pure life, which has shades of gray in the way pure is defined; but often the impression given is that you need to have it all figured out sexually before you can come inside. Mistakes are allowed but we pretend that they are easily avoided and quickly overcome. (Oddly, we don't put this much pressure on hardly any other aspect of our ethical life - certainly not in regard to materialism, gluttony, pride or abuse of power.) Just for starters this sort of approach leaves the woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery on the outside, precisely where Jesus did not leave them. Though we don't know the full conversations we do know this much. Jesus says to the former in John 8, go and sin no more; while we don't know how hard that might have been for her it is hard to imagine that Jesus gave her a one strike and you are out rule to follow. In the case of the Samaritan woman in John 4, he simply acknowledges her painful life as an invitation for her to see herself afresh and to see herself hopefully, while simultaneously inviting her into his kingdom where all of her life can be open to his salvation over time. So, we need to change our approach if we are to make the gospel good news for the world with regard to sex and sexuality. We need to make it clear that everyone is welcome in the church regardless of sexual history, or sexual orientation. It is within the church, the new community and, by virtue of our being together Christ's body, the new humanity - it is within the church that each of us are to submit our lives to Jesus as his disciples and seek to help each other understand how to make a faithful journey with regard to sex and sexuality.
Questions for discussion:
1. What role does fear play in the tendency among some Christians (maybe some of us) to want to give the impression that you have to have it all together before you can come in the church? How is this posture hypocritical?
2. Why do you think we often want to make people behave in a certain way before we will have anything to do with them, much less be comfortable sharing communion with them at the Lord's table?
3. What sort of disciplines and practices should you engage in during the course of any given week to help you be open to God's spirit in every part of you?
4. Do you think the degree to which one acknowledges that one is forgiven is likely going to be the degree to which one responds to God's leading in every part of our lives? If yes, why? If no, why not?
5. Do you think Grace Chicago should spend some time as part of our soon-to-be-revived lecture series talking about sex and sexuality?
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